When the Martian ice fields warm up in the spring, geysers of gas and dust burst from the frozen surface, spraying darker material into the air. This material is carried by the wind across the ground, forming patterns that mark the direction of the wind when they erupted. Much of the ice on the…
Little Devil
What looks to be a swirling dust devil is caught on camera in this raw image from the Mars rover Spirit. Dust devils on Mars are common, caused by heated air near the surface rising rapidly upwards in spinning columns, picking up dust and sand and propelled by the Martian winds. Although relatively gusty…
Once a Jet, Always a Jet
Cassini’s camera caught Enceladus in just the right light this past Saturday, backlit by the sun and showing off its signature icy jets. Emanating from fractures in its southern polar region, the jets are composed of water ices and hint at possible liquid water existing beneath its surface, kept liquid by heat from the…
The Shadows of Spring
As Saturn’s springtime approaches on August 11 it is gradually moving into a position when its rings will be perfectly aligned with its orbital plane, causing them to be lit by the sun edge-on. During the months until then many of the moons of Saturn will be casting their shadows upon the rings, fleeting…
Bottomless Pit?
Not really, but it sure seems like it! A 900-foot-wide hole in the Tractus Fossae region of Mars drops down into blackness in this photo by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter…it looks like an entrance to a cave or “bottomless pit” but is actually just a very steep-walled depression, formed by…
A Rusty Vista
I combined five color images from the Spirit rover to make this panoramic view eastwards of its current position on the northwest edge of “Home Plate” (not visible here). The red Martian sands stretch on to the horizon, where a distant ridge rises. Raw image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Tearin’ Up the Tracks
White silicate-rich soil has been exposed beneath a rusty-red top layer by Spirit’s tires in this photo, taken last month while the rover tried to find a navigable path in the soft Martian sands. Silicate material like this hints at the presence of liquid water in the region’s past. The color here is as it…
A Primordial Moon
Another beautiful composite by Gordan Ugarkovic, this false-color image shows the ancient cratered surface of Saturn’s moon Phoebe. About 132 miles across, Phoebe is a fifteenth the size of our own moon but is thought to be much, much older. With its retrograde (backwards) orbit, high orbital incline and extremely dark, pitted surface, it’s…
The Land of the Midnight Sun
The sun dips toward the horizon only to arch away in this composite photo, taken over the course of 11 Martian days (or “sols”) by the Phoenix Mars Lander in July of 2008. Like the polar regions on Earth, the sun does not set for weeks during the summer season in the Martian far…
King of the Gods
This image, taken over 9 years ago by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft on its way to Saturn, is still hailed as one of the best photos ever taken of Jupiter. Actually a carefully crafted composite of 27 images, this image took more than an hour to capture. It later had to be painstakingly adjusted to account…
A Procession of Moons
With Saturn angled such that its ring plane is aligned with Earth’s orbit, its rings appear as a thin band and several of its moons can be seen crossing its face in this photo, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on February 24, 2009. The smaller moons closer to the rings are, left to…
One Last Look Back
The Messenger spacecraft took this photo of Earth as it sped off toward Mercury in August of 2004. This view of our planet shows the western coast of South America, with the Peruvian Andes curving around and down into Chile before disappearing into the dark of night. Just above and to the right of the…
Lights in the Dark 